Best US Medical Universities
Find the best universities in the United States for medicine degrees through Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings data 2023.
1: Harvard University
With its founding in 1782, Harvard University’s medical school is the third oldest in the country.
The MD curriculum at the medical school is five years long, although students can stay an extra year to complete coursework, pursue a research project, or earn a second degree.
Harvard does not provide a “pre-med” undergraduate specialisation. Before applying to medical school, students should normally take classes in biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, arithmetic, biochemistry, and English. However, there is no defined curriculum for undergraduate students to follow.
Several groundbreaking discoveries are attributed to Harvard Medical School, including the introduction of the smallpox vaccine to the United States in 1799 by Benjamin Waterhouse, one of the school’s professors.
2: Columbia University
In addition to being one of the biggest medical universities in the Northeast, Columbia University Irving Medical Centre is home to the biggest medical research organisation in New York.
The school currently employs three faculty members who are Nobel laureates in medicine.
The Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons—all of which were established in 1767—are housed under the Irving Medical Centre of Columbia University.
The department offers a variety of programmes, including the MD in general medicine, which combines clinical medicine and science with professionalism and humanism. You can also choose to take electives offered by the university in addition to your studies.
3: Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University offers graduate, PhD, and fellowship programmes in addition to an MD programme.
The university offers an undergraduate major that examines the history of health and medicine in the fields of medicine, science, and the humanities.
Named for the benefactor Johns Hopkins, who used his fortune to build a hospital where anybody may receive care, regardless of age, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, Baltimore, Maryland’s Johns Hopkins University was founded. The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine debuted four years after the hospital did, in 1889.
Instead of addressing health and disease from a biological perspective, university teaching adheres to the “Genes to Society” curriculum, which “presents a model of health and disease based in the principles of adaptation to the environment, variability of the genotype, and stratification of risk.”
4: Yale University
Students interested in pursuing a career in medicine have access to several MD and PhD programmes offered by Yale University’s medical school.
In addition, the Yale School of Public Health provides collaborative degree programmes with other universities and a variety of public health courses.
During the first eighteen months of their education, all medical school students will attend a clinical skills course that teaches them how to communicate with patients and the value of the patient-doctor relationship. The school mandates training in palliative and end-of-life care because it feels that future clinicians ought to have a foundational knowledge in these areas.
In addition to existing courses, Yale students can pursue a certificate in global medicine.
The medical school places a strong focus on student research and mandates that all students submit dissertations that are based on their own unique research. Many students are encouraged by the institution to think about spending their fifth year of medical school doing research training.
5: Stanford University
Three organisations make up Stanford University’s medical school: Stanford Children’s Health, Stanford Health Care, and Stanford School of Medicine.
Through the Undergraduate Research Programme, undergraduates can also do biomedical research.
The school provides its students with MD, PA, and PhD programmes. In 2016, the MD programme introduced the Discovery Curriculum, which included new courses like pathophysiology and a series on the pharmaceutical treatment of disease. The goal of this programme is to integrate patient-centered clinical care with organ-based learning. Additionally, students have the option to personalise their course according to their interests.